What, Us Worry

By KIM BELLARD 2020 has been an awful year.  Hurricanes, wildfires, murder hornets, unjustified shootings, a divisive Presidential election, and, of course, a pandemic.  Most of us are spending unprecedented amounts of time sheltering in place, millions have lost their jobs, the economy is sputtering, and over a quarter million of us didn’t survive to Thanksgiving.  If you haven’t been depressed at some point, you haven’t been paying enough attention. Within the last two weeks, though, there has finally been some cause for hope.  Whether you want to credit Operation Warp Speed or just science doing what it does, we are on the cusp of having vaccines to battle COVID-19.  First Pfizer/BioNTech, then Moderna, and most recently, AstraZenica, announced vaccines that appear to be highly effective.  We’re having our Paul Revere moment, only this time with good news.  The vaccines are coming!  The vaccines are coming! It strikes me, though, that our enthusiasm about these vaccines says a lot about why the U.S. has had such a hard time with the pandemic; indeed, it tells us a lot about why our healthcare system is in the state it is. We’re suckers for the quick fix, the medical intervention that will bring us health. Unless you were alive when Woodrow Wilson was President, COVID-19 has been the worst public health crisis of our lifetime.  It took some time for us to fully realize how bad it was going to be, and,...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy COVID-19 vaccine Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs